


When Aliens Sing For You

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Character Development, Dancing and Singing, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hunk has the voice of an angel, I just wanted to do the blocking and dumb jokes, Lance is the only one that can even do half of these raps, M/M, Multi, Pidge is giving y'all subtitles in alien languages so y'all better appreciate it, Post-Season/Series 02, Self-Indulgent, Shiro becomes War Dad for a bit, WHY IS THERE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, this wasn't the plan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2018-09-25 02:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9799727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: In which the paladins are utter nerds that know the lyrics by heart, except for Keith, because he was a desert hermit, and Allura would like to know more about Earth culture.





	1. Alexander Hamilton

**Author's Note:**

> This is exactly what you're expecting, and it's exactly as much of a self-indulgent mess as you're expecting. You know what you're getting into.
> 
> This takes place in some nebulous period post-S2 after they find Shiro.

Shiro tapped his fingers on the table as he waited for Hunk to finish up breakfast, the other paladins making their way in as the morning wore on. He had his head propped up on his hand, the edge of his jaw nestling into the metal of his palm with surprising comfort.

The fingers of his other hand tap-tap-tapped against the table.

Allura made her way into the room, datapad in one hand, and a cup of steaming… _something_ in the other.

“Good morning, Shiro,” she said, taking a sip as she didn’t look up from the datapad.

(Shiro missed coffee.)

“Morning, Princess.” He yawned immediately afterwards. “Anything important I need to know before breakfast?”

“Mm, the Blade of Marmora will be joining us soon. They wanted to make some plans while there was a lull in the fighting.” Allura looked up from her datapad, and then back down. “We’ll see if we can get a day off for the paladins, if only to allow your bodies some rest from the constant physical exertion. You mentioned that was fairly important for your health.”

“Not fully necessary, but certainly helpful.” Shiro let his eyes track away from Allura as she turned her attention back to the datapad, focusing instead on Pidge and Lance’s entry. They were arguing about something from back in the Garrison, but the grins on their faces and overdone reactions seemed to imply that it was all in jest.

For a moment, the expression on Pidge’s face and the angle of her head, paired with her resemblance to her brother, brought back a memory to Shiro’s mind so vivid that it almost shocked him.

It was, for once, a good one.

Shiro’s fingers changed the tapping of their rhythm as he thought back to the early days of the Kerberos mission, when Matt had brought up one of his favorite albums.

And then proceeded to play it on repeat for the rest of the mission.

He’d mixed it up with other music, of course, but for the months-long trip, Shiro heard the album in full at least once a week. He considered himself lucky that the music was engaging enough that he didn’t get tired of it.

Shiro sung under his breath.

“How does the bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Carribean…”

He continued with a smile on his face as Lance and Pidge perked up, turning to stare at him in delighted shock. Well, Lance was delighted. Pidge was just shocked.

“ _Oh my god,_ Shiro knows Hamilton,” Lance whispered. He almost couldn’t be heard over Allura’s own exclamation.

“Shiro, that language isn’t appropriate for the breakfast table!”

“Allura, shhh!” Lance flapped his hands at her, not looking away from Shiro.

“The ten dollar Founding Father without a father,” Pidge took over with a growing grin, louder than Shiro had been, and Shiro ceded the line with a nod, sitting up straighter. “Got a lot farther by working a lot harder—”

Keith took a step into the room, confusion already building on his face, and Shiro looked up and put a finger to his lips, still grinning. There was an excited noise from the kitchen, and Hunk ran in.

“And every day,” Lance joined in at the end of Laurens’ lines, picking up for Jefferson and a little too excited for how somber the lines usually were, “While slaves were being slaughtered and carted away—”

“Shiro?” Allura asked, clearly lost.

Shiro just grinned and put a finger to his lips. “I’ll explain later.”

“Then a hurricane came, and devastation reigned,” Hunk took over Madison’s part, and Shiro decided now was a good time to stand up, even if Lance was the one to take Burr’s lines.

"Well, the word got around, they said 'this kid is insane, man!'"

Lance got… very into it, getting louder and more dramatic with every word, until he was outright shouting at Pidge, hand gesturing grandly. “What’s your name, man?”

Pidge, who had climbed up onto the table, and struck a dramatic pose. “Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton! And there’s—”

Hunk elbowed Shiro in the side. “You take Washington.”

Shiro shrugged, but it was interesting to see Hunk take Eliza’s lines, even as they all leaned in over the table, like it was some secret meeting, and whispered, “And Alex got better but his mother went quick.”

"Moved in with a cousin—"

Shiro straightened his spine and took a military position that wasn’t Garrison standard (but, rather, a silly thing he’d picked up from an older anime he’d watched as a child), and started with the George Washington lines, grinning a little too much when the younger paladins joined in on the ensemble line.

“ _There would have been nothing left to do for someone less astute_ ,” Lance dropped into Burr’s lines with a manic sort of glee, visibly enjoying himself more than Shiro would have expected, and legitimately skilled at the rapping part.

Pidge moved to the end of the table and took up another dramatic pose, as though she was on the end of a ship, just as Lance finished saying “ _In New York you can be a new man!”_

"In New York, you can—"

“Just you wait!” Pidge sang, surprisingly well, as the others took up the ensemble.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro noticed Antok and Kolivan make their way into the room, with something that passed for confusion on Kolivan’s face.

Shiro could deal with that later, because the chorus was coming up, and honestly he wouldn’t put forward any less energy than he possibly could at his max for that, because it was _important_.

"Alexander Hamilton!"

Lance shoved a wooden spoon into his hand, same as the others. " _Alexander Hamilton, we are waiting in the wings for you!"_

Shiro obligingly used it as a makeshift microphone, going so far as to put one foot up on his seat so he could strike even _more_ fun poses for the chorus.

“ _Will they know you rewrote the gaaaaaame? The world will never be the same!”_

Lance dashed out into an empty part of the room and turned to point at Pidge again. “The ship is in the harbor now, see if you can spot him!”

Shiro and Hunk obligingly continued the ensemble's "Just you wait!"s as they came up.

"His enemies destroyed his rep, America forgot him!"

“We fought with him,” Hunk started.

Pidge crouched down to take Laurens’ line, if only to indicate the change of character. “Me, I died for him.”

“Me, I trusted him,” Shiro said, splaying a hand against his chest.

“Me, I loved him!” Hunk put the back of his hand against his forehead, pitching his voice higher.

“And, me, _I’m the damn fool that shot him!”_ Lance yelled.

Hunk and Pidge echoed his last words in a way that indicated they were very practiced with messing around with this song.

"There's a million things I haven't done, but just you waaaaaait!" They all sang, continuing to use their spoon-microphones.

“What’s your name, man?” Lance demanded, pointing at Pidge.

And, of course, all of them cried out, “ _Alexander Hamilton!”_

They held their poses for another moment, and then Lance whooped and demanded high-fives from the three of them.

“Shiro, what the hell!” Lance demanded with a grin. “Since when do you know the Hamilton soundtrack?”

“Ah,” Shiro hesitated, glancing at Pidge. “Well, Matt was a pretty big fan. I heard a lot of it during the Kerberos mission. We never could get some of the raps down, but we had fun with it.”

“That explains a _lot_ ,” Pidge said. “I got double exposure, because Lance is kind of obsessed.”

“Excuse you, Hamilton is a _masterpiece_.” Lance put a hand over his heart as though Pidge’s words had offended him to the core. “I’m shocked, Pidge. I am _shocked_.”

“Hey, I like the musical too. It’s just, you know, _kind of annoying_ when you play it on repeat for eight hours while we’re trying to do a group study session for finals week.”

“How dare,” Lance crossed his arm and stuck his nose in the air.

“I agree with Pidge, actually,” Hunk admitted, edging back towards the kitchen. “Also, this was fun, but I have to go make sure Coran doesn’t burn our breakfast.”

Allura coughed.

The remaining paladins turned to look at her, and Shiro rubbed the back of his neck as she tilted her head expectantly.

“I’m assuming that was something from your home planet, then?” She said, after nobody volunteered any information. “Though not necessarily very widespread, as Keith didn’t know it.”

“I know _of_ it,” Keith corrected. “Just… I’ve never heard the entire thing, and I definitely never bothered to learn the words.”

“It’s a musical,” Shiro interrupted before Lance could start an argument over that. “About… oh, maybe fifty years ago? A well-known musical theater composer read a biography for a historical figure, and then decided to write a theatrical production about the man’s life. That was the opening song. We were tossing around parts a bit, but I’m actually surprised that this many of us know the words.”

“It was really popular when it first came out,” Pidge said, taking a seat as she finally got off the table. “And it still is, of course, but it came out with a theme and message that people of the time really needed and wanted to hear, so it _exploded_ into one of the most popular musicals of all time as a result.”

“It’s got a way larger cast than we have people, though. I mean, it’s more self-contained than a lot of shows, but it’s still more than the four people we have,” Lance propped his hands up on his hips and grinned wider. “What did you think of my singing voice?”

“I… see,” Allura said after a moment. “This is a major cornerstone of Earth culture, then?”

Shiro made a face and a wiggly hand gesture. “It’s certainly popular, and it’s a fun and relatively accurate account of an important event in American history, but it’s not necessarily a cornerstone? If we’re talking theater in general, Shakespeare’s been around for a few centuries and is still getting covered, and that’s not even getting into old plays from other parts of the world.”

“Homer,” Pidge butted in. “Like, the Odyssey is a couple millenia old and it’s still getting analyzed ad nauseum due to the effect that it’s had on Western literary and theatrical culture.”

Shiro nodded at Pidge, because that was actually a good point.

“So it’s not a cornerstone, but it’s still fairly well-known and popular,” Lance summarized. “Especially if even _Keith_ knows it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Dude… you lived in a shack in the desert for a year.” Lance walked over and put his hands on Keith’s shoulders, leaning in unnervingly close. “You were literally a desert hermit. That’s just short of literally living under a rock.”

“Lance, leave Keith alone,” Shiro said, though there wasn’t a lot of bite to it. “Sorry, Princess. I hoped we answered your question, at least.”

“I think I understand, yes.” Allura tilted her head, bringing up one hand to her face. “You said this was only the first song?”

“There are… maybe forty songs in the entire show?” Shiro frowned. “Lance, Pidge? Do you know?”

“Forty-six songs for the entire production, not counting Laurens’s letter,” Lance said after a moment’s thought.

“The OST is about two hours and twenty-two minutes long. The entire production takes longer, due to the scene with Laurens’s letter, intermission, and scene changes,” Pidge rattled off.

“Even I don’t know that,” Lance said, frowning.

Pidge smirked. “Well, I _do_ happen to have the original cast recording saved on my computer, which I brought with me, and may have listened to relatively recently.”

Lance immediately switched from holding Keith by the shoulders to holding Pidge. “Share. Share with me, Pidge, _I’m begging_.”

Pidge’s smirk curled a little further. “What if I said I had a video recording? The _original, official, Broadway recording_.”

Lance gaped, then spun to face Shiro. “Can we have a movie night?”

Shiro glanced at Allura, who still seemed a little nonplussed. She pursed her lips. “Well, I suppose I did say that a day of rest was in order.”

“You could join us,” Shiro said. “You’ve said you’re a little interested in human culture before, so this could be helpful in that regard, and you need to rest sometimes, too.”

“We could project it on a wall to get an extra-large screen,” Pidge considered aloud. “And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m singing along.”

“Same, dude. _Same_.” Lance slung an arm around Pidge’s shoulders. “We could act out the entire thing, assign a character to ourselves each song since we can’t really go through the entire thing with fixed roles due to the number of characters, dance around like we did just now…”

“I’d probably be lip-syncing,” Shiro admitted.

“How dare you,” Lance put a hand to his chest again. “You have a good voice, my man. _Use it_.”

“Not as good as Hunk’s,” Pidge said before Shiro could respond.

“Nobody’s as good as Hunk,” Lance waved the comment off. “Hunk has the singing voice of an angel.”

“I can hear you, you know!” Hunk called from the kitchen. “And I’d like to remind you that you’re wrong!”

“No, I’m not!” Lance called back. He turned back to the assembled paladins and aliens. “So, movie night?”

“I’m thinking movie afternoon, actually.” Shiro looked at the ceiling as he thought. “I’d like to give you a few hours to yourselves, and the video is probably going to result in at least a few hours of explanations for anyone _not_ from Earth, so doing it in the evening would be a bad idea, I think.”

“I would _happily_ answer any questions on that front.”

“He’s obsessed,” Pidge reiterated her earlier point. “Which… does mean he’d be pretty helpful on this front. And hey, if you give me those hours you mentioned, I could probably rig up some translation software for the subtitles.”

“Oooh, good idea Pidge, up top!” Lance held out his hand for another high-five, which he did receive, if grudgingly.

Allura blinked and turned to Kolivan and Antok. “I suppose we could get those plans finished before the…production.”

“I believe I would actually prefer to stay,” Kolivan said, eyes momentarily flicking over to Shiro. “It seems rather… interesting.”

Antok said nothing, but it was assumed that he would be staying at Kolivan’s side, as ever.

“Woohoo!” Lance pumped a fist in the air. “Movie night!”

Shiro wondered, for just a moment, how strange things were going to get.

(Very, it turned out.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm going to do the entire fic like this. I will do the entire show. I've got the "casting" for each song more or less figured out, and bits and pieces of choreography that involves a lot of standing on tables.
> 
> TBH written form is probably the WORST medium for this kind of project, but I'm not a good enough artist to do animation or even stills, so... c'est la vie! You get this self-indulgent mess instead.


	2. Aaron Burr, Sir/My Shot/The Story of Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance has a lot of feelings about history. Shiro has a lot of feelings about making sure his bratty younger paladins are okay. Pidge has a lot of feelings on not listening to random details of wars from centuries ago. Hunk just wants to get started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking that I'll just name the chapters after which songs are covered in it, yeah?

Pidge’s brow was furrowed in annoyance, Shiro noticed. She had a pile of datapads in her arms, and handed them over to Keith and the aliens as she entered the room. Lance trailed after her, hands in his pockets and a smile on his face.

“All the lyrics are on there. Mark down anything you might have a question on, and we’ll explain later. And yes, you will have questions, because this musical is like three-quarters random references to historical events or musicians and… honestly, I was planning on doing some [geniuslyrics](http://www.genius.com/albums/Lin-manuel-miranda/Hamilton-original-broadway-cast-recording) type thing where you could tap on a lyric and an explanation would pop up, but we’d never get through the entire show at that pace. Seriously, you could point at any line in the show and Lance can give you an entire freaking _monologue_ on what it means and how it’s necessary and relevant to the show or to the way historical events played out. Kind of impressive but also it took me less than five minutes before I wanted to sock him in the face to make him shut up about Hamilton fighting with a head cold during the Battle of Trenton.”

“Let me be excited about knowing something you don’t for once!”

“Lance, if I have to hear about Hamilton using British officers as an excuse to shoot the bursar’s office at Princeton with cannons _one more time—_ ”

“But he was so extra!”

“Enough!” Shiro said, catching their attention. “Lance, you can play historian later when we explain things to the Alteans and Galra. I realize that you apparently really like the humanities, but maybe take it down a notch when Pidge is working?”

 “Fiiiine, whatever.” Lance tossed himself down onto the bench that surrounded the circular table that Shiro had helped Hunk move into the room so they’d have a prop of sorts. Chairs had been set up for those who would be passively watching instead of playing along, facing a large wall that would be used as a projector screen for the show. On the opposite wall, Shiro knew, Pidge was planning to put up lyrics in case anyone forgot.

“We can pause between songs to divvy up parts,” she said, setting up her laptop on another table and clicking through to a set of lyrics. “Shouldn’t be too hard to switch around?”

“The only rules are…” Lance held up a finger. “One, Hunk is always Eliza, because cinnamon rolls.”

“Lance, I’m not—”

“Two,” Lance continued as though he hadn’t heard, putting up another finger, “Shiro is always Washington, because _obviously_.”

“I don’t know if—”

“Three,” Pidge said, staring at Lance, utterly unphased, “you take all the hard raps, since the rest of us can’t actually get that down. Four…”

She trailed off, then leaned in to whisper at Lance’s ear for a moment.

“Why do _you_ get that part?” Lance asked, not seeming all that offended but still playing up the hurt for giggles.

“Well,” Pidge said flatly, then gestured for Lance to come closer so she could whisper again.

Lance gaped for a moment, and then threw his head back and cackled. He practically crowed the words, “Beautiful! Fucking _beautiful_ , Pidge!”

Pidge readjusted her glasses. “It’s…it’s not that funny, dude.”

“It _is_ , though,” Lance sniggered.

“Can we start the video?” Hunk asked from over by the lights. Everyone else had settled in while Pidge and Lance bickered.

“Starting!” Pidge said, and the video came to life on the wall, the lights going down, except for some over the prop-table and nearby floor, angled in such a way that they didn’t impede the audience’s view of the main video. “We can just point at each other for this one if we want to dictate parts, like we did this morning.”

Shiro didn’t have a problem with that, and the first song proceeded much as that morning had, in terms of who sang what, and how. Shiro kept an eye on the audience, watching for the surprise and confusion as it came up. There was definitely some, though not as much as there could have been. Allura leaned over to Keith once, whispering something, and Shiro’s lip-reading wasn’t all that good, but even he could tell when Keith was saying, “I don’t know.”

They picked up the next song almost immediately, not even needing to pause the video to decide on parts.

 _Stay in character_ , Shiro reminded himself. Lance was getting really into this, and Pidge and Hunk seemed to be enjoying it as well. It would be remiss of him to ruin their fun by not putting in as much effort as they were.

“1776, New York City,” Hunk and Pidge whispered.

Shiro felt a hand tap the back of his shoulder.

“Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?”

He turned with a smile. “Well, that depends on who’s asking.”

Lance’s return smile was nervous and a little embarrassed, one hand reaching up to scratch awkwardly at his neck. “Oh well, sure, sir, my—”

It wasn’t nervousness at being on a stage, Shiro realized quickly as the song went on, Lance’s emotions changing on a dime as each line introduced a new feeling. It was just him being in-character.

Well, now Shiro _really_ needed to put in some effort for their amateur-hour production.

Shiro put the full weight of his Disbelieving, Disappointed Dad Voice when he said, “You punched the bursar.”

Lance blinked. “Yes! I wanted to do what you did—”

Shiro let his expression grow a little more unnerved, a little less comfortable with each passing moment, but still calmly said, “It was my parents’ dying wish before they passed.”

If it weren’t for the fact that the play was designed for the next lines to be inappropriately giddy, Shiro might have been worried at the grin on Lance’s face and the fire in his eyes as he spoke of war.

As it was…

Well.

“Let me offer you some free advice?” Shiro noted Lance’s look of hope before he spoke. “Talk less.”

Look of hope gone. Dismay here. “What?”

“Smile more,” Shiro sang the words as he gestured with one hand, knowing that his own smile could be charming when he wanted it to be.

“Ha.”

Shiro tried not to break out into a silly grin as he kept singing, because that was not the kind of emotion he was trying to portray right now.

“Yo yo yo yo yo! What time is it?” Pidge climbed up onto the bench. “Show time!”

“Like I said.” Shiro shook his head in mock disapproval, and then watched in amusement as Lance slid seamlessly in between Pidge and Hunk to round out the group.

“I’m John Laurens in the place to be—” Pidge didn’t actually need to look at the lyrics for this one, but ended up looking down at Lance and Hunk for encouraging, in-character laughter.

Lance took up Lafayette’s lines, getting to his feet and putting on an accent, and for some reason putting a good half of movements into a single hand. His wrist had to be getting a work out.

“—the _Lancelot_ of the revolutionary set,” he sang with a wink to the audience, and Shiro almost groaned as he realized _why_ Lance had insisted on being Lafayette. The smug, self-assured dancing as he finished out the stanza was actually pretty good, and Lance didn’t bother hiding his laughter when Hunk started singing for Hercules Mulligan.

It _was_ kind of weird to see Hunk making such crude sex jokes, something that Allura clearly agreed with, if the sight of her gaping was any sign at all. Hunk seemed to be enjoying himself though, and Shiro almost missed Burr’s next line because… well, he forgot he had one, honestly, too caught up in watching the younger paladins enjoying themselves. The fact that they addressed him directly for a few lines before he spoke was all that saved him.

“Good luck with that: you’re takin’ a stand. You spit. I’m ‘a sit. We’ll see where we land.”

Hunk and Lance took way too much joy in booing him before Pidge called him out on his shit with a grin, closely followed by Lance doing the same with a much more critical expression.

“Ooh, who are you?”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

“Ooh, who is this kid, what’s he gonna do?”

The music changed, and Shiro almost asked if they were going to take a moment to switch parts around, but…well, the two songs were the same single scene, the same characters, everything. Lance would still be taking the absolute _monologue_ of an opening rap, and all the other difficulties, so all Shiro had to do for Burr was… stand back and wait.

“—hey, yo, I’m just like my country, I’m young, scrappy and hungry, and I’m not throwing away my shot!”

Shiro ran through the song in his mind. Huh. Burr only had the one stanza in this. Okay, then.

He turned his attention back to the younger paladins. Lance had started dancing around as he sang, holding one side of his zip-up hoodie in each hand to accentuate his movements.

“I probably shouldn’t brag, but dag, I amaze and astonish! I got a lot a’ brains but no polish, I gotta holler just to be heard—”

Shiro suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

He didn’t show it, of course. Lance seemed to be enjoying himself as he sang, sinking into character as Hamilton, but there was something about Lance saying those lines with such _conviction_ that made Shiro want to step back and reevaluate Lance as a person, because that was… a little too accurate.

 _Gotta holler just to be heard_ , huh?

“A-L-E-X-A-N-D, E-R, we are, meant to be!”

“A colony that runs independently, yet—” Lance continued singing, and Shiro started wondering just how much Lance had ended up learning due to his supposed obsession with the musical. He’d clearly memorized most of the lyrics, and his discussion with Pidge implied that he knew a lot about the historical context surrounding most of the musical. Had he also ended up with more information than anyone expected regarding economics and the political process?

Shiro was going to guess that that was a hard yes, but it wasn’t like he could ask until after they were done.

Shiro joined in with the others on, “He says in parentheses,” despite it not being a Burr line.

“Don’t be shocked when your hist’ry book mentions me,” Lance said with a grin. “I will lay down my life if it sets us free—”

 _Please don’t_ , was Shiro’s immediate thought. He knew it was just a line from the musical, but there was once again something unnerving about how much Lance seemed to connect to the text, and they really had been risking their lives endlessly against Zarkon, hadn’t they?

The real question was whether Lance was just an uncannily good actor, or if he actually did feel the way these lines said Hamilton had.

Lance actually took a step to the side to signify switching characters over to Lafayette, his body language changing entirely. “I dream of life without the monarchy, the unrest in France will lead to anarchy. Anarchy, how you say, how you say, oh _anarchy!_ ”

He seemed to _really_ enjoy that accent.

There was a flash of something pained in Lance’s face as Hunk started singing, and Shiro almost asked what was wrong until he saw Pidge roll her eyes. Maybe this was a long-standing problem of some sort?

(Hours later, he’d get around to asking, and receive the answer that the _entire stanza_ regarding Hercules Mulligan was historically inaccurate. He would then receive an explanation of several minutes regarding the man’s actual status at the time, as a fully independent tailor, with a wife and child, who was widely regarded as one of the premier fashion authorities in the city, with no need for social advancement. _Not_ , Lance stressed, just a tailor’s apprentice.)

(Lance had a lot of feelings about this sort of thing, apparently.)

As Pidge took up Laurens’s lines, Shiro chanced another glance at the audience, even though he knew his own part was coming up soon. People seemed engaged at least, and Coran and Allura’s eyes were flicking between the main screen and the paladins at any given time. They both wore thoughtful frowns, and Keith was sitting with his weight resting partially on his knees, fingers laced loosely together. He, at least, had more understanding of the historical context than the Alteans and Galra did.

Shiro spun around back to the paladins. “Geniuses! Lower your voices.”

And… well, Shiro did have plenty of differences from what he was saying, but there was a part of him that said that there was a lot of utterly unnecessary trouble that could have been avoided if someone just shut up a little.

(This included Shiro. There were problems that Shiro could have avoided if he only didn’t talk immediately, though the people that usually started this sort of problem were Keith and Pidge.)

“If you talk, you’re gonna get _shot!_ ”

Lance waved him off with one hand, bouncing towards the front. “Burr, check what we got.”

And that was a very inappropriate hip movement to do as he gestured to himself while praising Lafayette, but Shiro could wait to scold him.

He face-palmed anyway.

At one point, he did notice Keith mouthing the words “manumission abolitionists” with confusion, which… well, it wasn’t like Shiro knew what manumission was either.

Lance’s body language shrunk inwards, folding in on himself as he made his way through the awkward, hesitant, self-conscious apology stanza, only opening up again as Pidge grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward while yelling, “Let’s get this guy in front of a crowd!”

Shiro didn’t want to say that they started _jamming out_ , per se, but that was essentially what it was. He kept to the fringes, pacing slowly around them in a wide circle, hands clasped behind his back and attempting to school his expression into something that approximated an internal war between amusement and disapproval.

Pidge hopped up onto a bench again. “Rise up! When you’re livin’ on your knees, you rise up! Tell your brother that he’s gotta rise up, tell your sister that she’s gotta rise up!”

Lance and Hunk joined in. “When are these colonies gonna rise up?”

Shiro hummed along with the “Whoa-oh”s.

Lance took Pidge’s place on the bench as she hopped down, and started rap-monologuing about death.

…Shiro liked that monologue. It made him feel better about himself.

Lance’s face held an expression that Shiro could only describe as worried fervor as he started talking about the political and economic fallout that winning the war would bring, and the 'current' problems they had on that front, practically shouting as he got to the end and jumped off the bench to the words, “For the first time I’m thinkin’ past tomorrow!”

The rest of the song played out as Shiro might have expected, with Lance dragging Pidge and Hunk around in dances and lots of high-fives.

He may have been smiling indulgently by the end. It was nice to see the three enjoying themselves like this, laughing as they stumbled over their own feet and each other, trying to keep up with the rapidly changing lyrics and rhythms.

They held their final pose at the end of the last “Not throwin’ away my shot!” for a moment, and then scrambled to take seats at the table.

“Shiro, you grab Lafayette for this one!” Lance called, and Shiro obligingly took a seat at the table, trying to change his body language to something a little intoxicated and fairly melancholy.

Lance held up an empty hand in a false toast. They had no props other than the table and the clothes on their backs. “I may not live to see our glory!”

They mimicked him.

“But I will gladly join the fight!”

Again.

“And when our children tell our story!”

Shiro winced as he remembered what happened to Hamilton’s only child to make it to the stage.

“They’ll tell the story of tonight!”

“Let’s have another round tonight,” Hunk said, and they repeated him in a round.

Pidge stood up, though she remained on the ground this time. “Raise a glass to freedom, something they can never take away.”

Shiro let the song continue, joining in when appropriate, and took a moment to wonder how the aliens were reading into this. Seeing how many alien species had only a single government had made it clear that Earth’s system, with hundreds of countries, any of which could be at war with themselves or each other at any given time, was a bit of an oddity. What they were getting right now was a stylized snapshot view of a single one of those conflicts from centuries earlier. Were they judging humanity for seeking freedom from each other? Or did they not yet understand just what the conflict was about?

“They’ll tell the story of tonight.”

The song ended.

Pidge paused the video, and they got ready for the next piece.

Time for a scene change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to know more about historical context, please visit **actualshonenprotagonist** on tumblr. I'm not a historian, but he is. Otherwise, geniuslyrics actually is a great resource.
> 
> I've realized this might be a thing that people will do, because it happened in real life, so...
> 
> Please do not suggest who should take which role at which time. I know it's tempting, because I've done crossovers with a role element before, and people just can't resist making suggestions even when asked not to. But I have cast every single song in a way that I like and which furthers the character-driven plots in a way that I think is useful. People will change parts a lot. There are only a handful of recurring parts that do not switch characters at any point (there's at least one role that was GOING to stick with one person throughout, but someone else gets convinced to take one of the songs because character-driven plot, yay).
> 
> The only exception is the ending to Ten Duel Commandments/beginning of Meet Me Inside, and that's only because there's so many parts in quick succession that I'm still juggling them as I try to decide.
> 
> Also I was going to include the entirety of Pidge's declaration of which part she wanted to keep to herself, but I think it'll be funnier if I leave that reveal for later.


	3. The Schuyler Sisters/Farmer Refuted/You'll Be Back/Right Hand Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story of _why_ these people fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is almost as long as the other two put together. I was planning on only having three songs to a chapter at most, but Right Hand Man fit in thematically with these three more than it did with the next five (which are the romance mini-arc).
> 
> I urge you to actually listen to the music while you read. The writings and the music won't match up timing-wise all the time (especially during the first two songs of the chapter), but you can use the 'lagging' moments to imagine all the silliness you want. There's a lot of lyrics-skipping for songs with repetitive choruses and tonal stability; fun to watch and listen to, but not much to write about.

“I call Burr!” Lance said immediately. “Because he’s a flirt.”

“I call Angelica!” Pidge followed quickly. “Because she’s a feminist.”

The two of them turned towards Hunk and Shiro.

“I guess since I’m supposed to be Eliza, that leaves Shiro with Peggy?” Hunk said awkwardly.

Shiro shrugged. He wasn’t nearly as invested as the younger paladins.

“Awesome,” Pidge said, restarting the video and grabbing Shiro and Hunk’s wrists to pull them away from the lights just before the song started.

Lance took his place in the center of the lights, right in front of the table, and started talking. Singing. Rapping? Whatever.

“There’s nothing rich folks love more, than going downtown and slummin’ it with the poor—” Lance looked like he was confiding in the audience as he spoke, gesturing off-stage with one thumb as he held up a hand to hide his mouth from the ‘sisters’’ view. “Sneak into the city just to watch all the guys at—”

“Work, work!”

“Angelica!” Pidge sang, sliding into view.

“Work, work!”

Hunk followed a moment later. “Eliza!”

Shiro outright bounced into view. “And Peggy!”

“The Schuyler Sisters!”

Lance was grinning way, _way_ too widely, off to the side.

At the second “Peggy!” Shiro bopped forward like he was giving someone a greeting kiss on the cheek in Europe, and couldn’t help but feel downright _cute_ for a moment.

“Daddy said to home by sundown,” Shiro complained, sidling up to Pidge, who had by this point climbed up onto the bench again.

“Daddy doesn’t need to know.” And oh that _was_ a mischievous sibling look. Pidge most definitely had that one down pat.

“Daddy said not to go downtown!” he insisted.

Hunk elbowed him lightly. “Like I said, you’re free to go.”

“But!” Pidge interrupted, bending down just a little to be closer to eye-level. “Look around, look around, the revolution's happening in New York!”

“New York!” Shiro sang along with Hunk, and then barely remembered to bring his hand up to snap in the air as Pidge straightened up to enter the pose, though far earlier than the women in the original video did.

“Work!”

He couldn’t keep in character. He was grinning too hard, because it was all just… just so _silly_ right now. Shiro was playing Peggy. It was silly. He loved it.

Pidge sat down on the table, hands resting on crossed knees, and leaned in as Hunk asked, “Angelica, remind me what we’re looking for…”

Lance slid back into the light. “She’s lookin’ for me!”

“Eliza, I’m looking for a mind at work, work!”

Lance strutted towards the three of them, hands tucked behind his back. “There’s nothin’ like summer in the city—”

He grabbed one of Pidge’s hands as he kept talking, “Excuse me, miss, I know it’s not funny, but your perfume smells like your daddy’s got money.”

Shiro could see Pidge struggling not to laugh.

“You’re searchin’ for an urchin who can give you ideals!”

“Burr, you disgust me.” She yanked her hand out of Lance’s and turned away, nose in the air.

“Ah, so you’ve discussed me.” Lance’s grin got a little smarmy as he held a hand up under his chin in a checkmark pose. He then popped his jacket like a collar. “I’m a trust fund baby, you can trust me.”

Pidge leaped back to her feet, ignoring Lance. “I’ve been reading Common Sense, by Thomas Paine—”

Shiro followed Hunk’s lead, and they each put one foot up on the bench and brought their hands up again for, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal!”

Shiro kept dancing as the song went on, only popping in for “greatest city in the world!”

“’Cuz I’ve been—” Pidge started again, climbing up to stand in the middle of the table.

Lance gestured at Hunk and Shiro in a series of movements that Shiro didn’t quite understand, but resulted in Hunk pulling Shiro forward to join Lance in pushing on the table so that it… spun.

They were rotating the table while Pidge sang.

Okay.

Shiro would watch to make sure she didn’t fall.

They stopped as the song came full-circle to an everyone-but-Burr “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now!”

And then there was, unsurprisingly, more crowing about New York being the greatest city in the world, that ended with all four of them putting their hands up in V-shapes and turning on the spot a few times.

(Well, no one had ever accused New Yorkers of modesty, at least.)

One more “And Peggy!”

Aaaaaaand more singing about New York.

Well, at least it was fun.

“Okay,” Pidge said, pausing the video. “Next one…”

“Can anyone actually do Hamilton’s part for the next one? The rhythm is weird,” Hunk said.

Lance and Pidge both raised their hands, and after a little eyebrow-wiggling conversation where Lance was apparently doubtful of Pidge’s ability, and Pidge was entirely certain of it, Lance bowed at Pidge with a flourish. “It’s all yours, m’lady.”

“Cool. Who’s my Seabury, then?”

“I can do that one,” Hunk said, scanning through it. “Shiro and Lance can be the bit parts holding you back.”

“Nobody can hold me back,” Pidge argued, starting the video again.

“Spoken like a true Hamilton,” Lance muttered with a smile.

Hunk came up in front of the table with small, shuffling steps, holding his hands out in front of him as though reading from a scroll. “Hear ye, hear ye! My name is Samuel Seabury, and I present ‘Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress!’”

Lance hit Pidge lightly on the shoulder. “Oh my god, tear this dude apart.”

Shiro put hands on both of their shoulders and pushed them apart as he stepped between them.

Hunk ignored him, and continued singing. “This Congress does not speak for me!”

“Let him be,” Shiro said, squeezing the hand on Pidge’s shoulder, as though to hold her back.

“For shame, for shame!”

“Yo!” Pidge yelled, leaping forward and landing with a hard smack of sneakers on… whatever Altean floors were made of. “He’d have you all unravel at the sound of screams but the revolution is coming!”

Hunk’s face gained a pinched, uncomfortable look, though he didn’t drop the lyrics.

“My dog speaks more eloquently,” Pidge mocked.

Lance actually giggled when Pidge asked, with an utterly innocent expression on her face, “Is he in Jersey?”

And then Pidge went off, jumping up onto the bench so she could better lean over to yell in Hunk’s face, given how much taller he was than her.

“Don’t modulate the key then not debate with me!”

“Alexander, please.” Shiro stepped forward to deliver his own line, watching Lance run around to the other side so he could act like a new person who’d just arrived.

“Silence! A message from the king!”

Hunk ran for the computer to pause it, then spun around. “Okay, so—”

“Pidge,” Lance said immediately.

“Me,” Pidge agreed.

There was a moment of silence. Shiro broke it with, “I’m not complaining, but why?”

Pidge pointed at her own face, and deadpanned, “You see anyone else with King George’s white privilege?”

There was another moment of silence, where Pidge stared at them and Lance bounced on his toes.

Lance broke and collapsed into giggles, clutching at the table for support. “She just—she told me e-e-earlier and—”

“Okay, don’t hurt yourself,” Shiro said, shaking his head. So this was what they’d been talking about earlier.

Pidge rolled her eyes and climbed up onto the table. She pointed at Hunk. “Hit it!”

Shiro faded back out of the lights as the piano chords started.

“You say, the price of my love’s not a price that you’re willing to pay…”

Shiro eyed the audience as Pidge took the solo song. He felt a little guilty about the pauses between songs to decide on parts, as few as there had been so far, because it was probably causing trouble with immersion or whatever.

Pidge’s dancing was at least a fair bit more emotive than the original actor’s, who chose _very_ minimal movement for the song, while Pidge stepped around a bit, and started strutting as the song picked up the pace.

“You’ll be back!”

Lance sidled up next to Shiro, catching his attention.

“What?” Shiro asked, pitching his voice just high enough for Lance to hear, but not enough to carry over the music.

Lance grinned and gestured for Shiro to come closer. That seemed like a bad idea to Shiro, because that was a trouble grin, but he nonetheless bent down a little so Lance could whisper in his ear.

“You know how this song is basically like… the stalker ex-boyfriend you hope to never date in the first place?”

Shiro didn’t know where this was going. “Yes…?”

“Okay, so, so, so,” Lance audibly clamped down on a few giggles. “I-imagine, _please_ , Zarkon singing this to the B-Black Lion!”

Shiro thought on that for a long moment, trying to connect the two situations in his mind.

“Oceans rise, empires fall!”

He had the misfortune to focus back in on Pidge just as she sang the line, “And when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!”

Shiro clapped a hand over his to keep the high-pitched keen of laughter from escaping.

“Da da da da _da_ , da da da da _da_ ya da, da da da da _da_ ya da!”

Lance danced a little in place, grinning with fists bunched together under his chin, watching Shiro fall to his knees and stop his own breathing in an attempt to keep from bursting in howls of laughter, because _holy shit._

_What the actual fuck._

“You say our love is draining and you can’t go oooooooon!” Pidge sang, planted in place with her legs spread wide, all her weight on one foot as the other went tapping to the beat on the last word, heel lifting up and down as her head dropped to the side in a dab.

"You'll be the one complaining when I am gooooooooone," she sang, with some slightly ridiculous hip movements.

Shiro was legitimately having trouble getting up from how hard his body was trying to laugh. He turned his eyes back to the stage in hopes that it would distract him at least a little from the image of Zarkon on his knees and making desperate creepy ex-boyfriend hand gestures at the Black Lion.

“And no! Don’t change the subject!” Pidge got on her tiptoes for a moment, shoulders hunched and arms up and wide like she was a puppeteer, fingers wiggling with the piano trill, and then dropping forcefully down with the next line. “’Cause you’re my favorite _subject_!”

Then she started adding hip thrusts to the side with each tiny step she took forward towards the edge of the table.

_Not helping not helping NOT HELPING_

“Oh my god,” Lance whispered, rubbing Shiro’s back. “Did I break you? I broke you. I broke Space Dad. Fuck.”

“D-d-don’t s-s-swear,” Shiro managed to choke out between suppressed giggles.

“Oh my god, you’re _crying_.”

Shiro waved him off, hand back over his mouth. He managed to speak, albeit very muffled. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be back, like before, I will fight the fight and win the war.” Pidge hopped and landed with her legs shoulder-width apart. “For your love, for your praise, and I’ll love ya ‘til my dyin’ days!”

“When you’re _gone_ , I’ll go _mad!_ ” She spun dramatically on the spot and landed on her knees, momentarily breaking through Shiro’s uncontrollable laughter as he panicked that she was about to _fall off the table._ “So don’t throw away this thing we had…”

She got back to her feet slowly, moving towards the front of the circular table again; it was good that she was small, because the thing was only eight or so feet across, and didn’t leave a whole lot of room for dancing.

“’Cause when push comes to _shove_ , I will… _kill your friends and family_ … to remind you. Of. My. Love!”

Shiro could feel the snort of laughter trying to escape through his nose and quickly clapped a hand over his face again.

“Da da da—”

Pidge’s movements got larger again, until she got to the very edge of the table and stuck her arms out horizontally, peculiarly stiff. Lance and Hunk rushed towards her, positioning themselves on either side. She lifted up onto her toes and slowly tilted forwards as though she was about to fall off.

“Everybody!”

Lance pushed up on one arm as it Pidge fell onto his hands, and Hunk pushed up on the other, and together they lifted Pidge up above their heads, where she pretended to walk a little on air as the brought her forward, turned her on the spot once, and finally set her back on the ground with the final set of “Da da da!”s.

They held the pose for a moment, while the video above went dark with the stage, and then Hunk rushed to pause the video and turned on Shiro, who had finally managed to get himself under control.

“What the fuck, dude?” Pidge demanded, seeming more amused than offended. That was good. “I almost missed lines because you kept freaking out over here.”

“Lance’s fault,” Shiro said, just a little bluntly. There was still a grin on his face.

“ _In my defense_ , I had no way of knowing he’d laugh that much!” Lance protested. “I thought he’d smile a bit and make snort a little. I didn’t know he’d do _that._ Shiro never laughs like that!”

Hunk looked from Lance to Shiro to Pidge, and then back to Lance. “What did you even _say?_ ”

“I…” Lance trailed off. “I mean, you know King George is caricatured as the creepy ex-boyfriend you hope to never have in the first place?”

“Yeah,” Hunk and Pidge said in unison.

“Okay, so…” Lance glanced nervously at the Alteans and Galra and mice and Keith, all watching curiously, and then gestured for Hunk and Pidge to come closer. “It’s really dumb, so…”

Shiro watched as Pidge and Hunk’s eyes widened while Lance whispered in their ears. After a dumbfounded moment, Pidge let out a loud, obnoxious “HA!” while Hunk laughed a little more quietly.

“I mean, it’s not as funny as I expected, just going by…” Pidge gestured vaguely at Shiro. “But I can see the appeal. Nice one.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Lance said primly. “On the other hand, we do have an entire show to get through, so…”

“Well, the next one’s Right Hand Man, so…” Hunk looked down at the second screen, set up to scroll lyrics on the back wall. “Mostly Hamilton, Burr, and Washington.”

“I wanna steal the cannons,” Lance said.

“And Shiro’s gonna be War Dad instead of Space Dad for a bit,” Pidge said. “Hunk, do you wanna take Burr or should I?”

“You take it. Hercules Mulligan has a bit part here and it’s fun.”

“But you’ve been getting so few lines compared to—” Pidge started, but Hunk cut her off with a hand lightly clapping down onto her shoulder.

“Pidge. It’s fine. I’m not as invested as you two. Don’t worry about it. I’d really rather watch you guys having fun,” Hunk assured her.

“I’m not that invested,” Pidge argued.

Hunk gave her a long look, one that Shiro mimicked, because… well. Actions versus words and all that.

“Ahem,” Allura coughed into her fist. “Are you going to resume the show soon?”

“Sorry!” Lance called with a grin. “Everyone, places!”

“We don’t _have_ any…” Pidge said, rolling her eyes as Lance hit the play button and rushed back out onto stage, shooing Shiro out towards the back, behind the table and out of the centralized light.

This time, Shiro watched carefully to see what the process was, if there was any. He himself held one hand behind his back and the other to his stomach, as though tucking it into a waistcoat he wasn’t actually wearing as military commanders tended to do in old paintings.

All three of them, Lance in the middle in front of the table, and the other to a few feet off to either side, seemed to sink in their own ways into character. The process looked almost like they were melting in a new shape and emotion, like they’d done this a thousand times before and knew just what they were meant to be.

 _Infiltration_ , Shiro’s mind supplied. He didn’t want to be thinking like a paladin right now, not while they were meant to be relaxing and having fun. But the voice kept up the silent whisper. _Lance is doing a better job acting than Allura did when we infiltrated the Galactic Hub._

(Plenty of people could act with more skill than Allura, to be fair. She wasn’t a particularly skilled liar.)

“British Admiral Howe’s got troops on the water… Thirty-two thousand troops in New York harbor…” they all sang, not too concerned with parts for the ensemble.

“As a kid in the Caribbean, I wished for a war,” Lance sang, taking small steps backwards. He… actually was from the Caribbean, wasn’t he? Cuba instead of wherever Hamilton was from, but Lance _had_ moved the US from the Caribbean fairly young. Huh.

“Rise up!” Hunk and Pidge joined in.

“If they tell my story, I am either gonna die on the battlefield in glory—”

 _Not on my watch, you’re not_. Shiro thought, just a tad aggressive. He was protective of the younger paladins for a _reason_ , after all. They were smol. They got hurt easily. He wasn’t about to let one of them bite the bullet before he did.

“Understand! It’s the only way to—”

“Rise up! Rise up!”

“Here he comes…”

Pidge slid into center stage, yanking Lance out of the way as she did.

“Here comes the General!”

Shiro took a step forward, halfway into the light, as Pidge started acting as his hype man. “Ladies and gentlemen!”

Shiro took another step forward, the light hitting everything but his face.

“The moment you’ve been waiting for!”

Shiro stepped fully into the light, keeping his face as stern as possible.

“The pride of Mount Vernon!”

Shiro stepped up onto the bench around the table.

“George Washington!”

“We are outgunned!” Shiro yelled, starting a slow tread around the table, on top of the bench.

“WHAT!” Lance, Hunk, and Pidge yelled, incredibly enthusiastic.

“Outmanned!”

“WHAT!”

“Outnumbered, outplanned!”

“BUCK BUCK BUCK BUCK BUCK!”

“We gotta make an all-out stand.” Shiro paused as he came to the front edge of the table, then turned to face the audience and planted his feet in a sturdy stance, bringing up the arm in front to start gesturing with his words. “Ayo, I’m gonna _need_ a right hand man.”

“Buck buck buck buck buck!”

Shiro sat down on the table heavily, knees spreading out so he could lean forward and rest both hands on them, as though confiding to someone. “Check it—”

He _barely_ managed to keep from stumbling over his words as he spoke, glancing up more than once to make sure he actually remembered his next line properly.

“—Writin’ letters to relatives, embellishin’ my elegance and eloquence,” was a _really hard line_ , for some reason.

“The truth is in your face when you hear the British cannons go—”

The trio cupped their hands around their mouths and yelled as loud as they could. “BOOM!”

Shiro jumped to his feet as the imaginary cannon went off. “Any hope of success is fleeting.”

He wondered, of course, what the aliens were reading into the lines, especially when they heard metaphors. “We put a stop to the bleeding as the British take Brooklyn,” was pretty self-explanatory, but… “Knight takes Rook, but look!” wasn’t.

“We are outgunned!”

“WHAT!”

“Outmanned!”

“WHAT!”

“Outnumbered, outplanned!”

“BUCK BUCK BUCK BUCK BUCK!”

“We gotta make an all-out stand,” Shiro said, preparing for the shift. “Ayo, I’m gonna _need_ a right hand man.”

He cupped his hands around his mouth, turned to the side, and leaned back. “INCOMING!”

And then he jumped off the bench and moved out of the light.

Lance took the floor. “They’re battering down the Battery, check the damages!”

“RAH!” Hunk seemed to find great pleasure in this nonsense line.

Lance turned to the audience, looking like he was almost inflating with the God-given stamina he was talking about as he rose up onto his toes… and then he seemed to drop, bending his knees and his back and gaining a sneaky grin on his face as he jerked his head to the side. “Yo, let’s steal their cannons!”

Shiro took a step back into the light, noting out of the corner of his eye that Lance and Hunk were miming pushing a cannon, repeatedly glancing over their shoulders and faking winces at imaginary gunfire and cannonballs as they circled around behind the table.

“BOOM!”

“—Goes the cannon, watch the blood and the shit spray, and—”

Shiro faked a wince. “BOOM!”

“—goes the cannon, we’re abandoning Kip’s Bay?”

He kept up the winces at each successive “BOOM!” and let his own tone and face and even _posture_ reflect growing incredulity and frustration, pacing back and forth in front of the table. If the kids were going all out, then so was he.

“This close to giving up, facing mad scrutiny.” He spun to face the audience, planting his feet and summoning up an expression of tempered rage. “I scream in the face of this mass mutiny!”

He couldn’t see the audience’s faces. It didn’t matter, because he could _feel_ it. The frustration and hopelessness and maybe just a little spite that the leader of a revolutionary army might feel.

Maybe this was the kind of feeling that lead to Lance seeming like he _became_ these characters, instead of just pretending to be them.

“Are these the men with which I am to defend America?” He demanded, and started walking to the side. Burr was supposed to approach him soon, which meant Pidge needed to enter, and it would be nice to have a bit of the table between them. Not all of it, but just a few seats apart and positions that were biased towards the audience.

“I am in dire need of assistance.”

“Your Excellency, Sir?”

“Who are you?” Shiro asked, forcing his face and voice to enter something very tired.

“Aaron Burr, Sir? Permission to state my case?”

And so the conversation continued, Pidge acting just a little smug and just a little like a terrified college graduate on a job interview, and Shiro letting himself get less and less impressed with every line.

Lance stepped into the light with a long movement that, while technically fairly contained, still _felt_ large. Even with his hands placed to front and back, like in old paintings, he moved like he owned the space.

Like, well, Hamilton.

“Your Excellency, you wanted to see me?”

“Hamilton, come in, have you met Burr?”

“Yes, sir—”

Lance and Pidge’s heads snapped towards each other, twin expressions of distaste on their faces, and then back to Shiro. “We keep meeting.”

Shiro could have laughed at the fact that they’d coordinated that so perfectly. Or was it just coincidence?

“Burr?”

“Sir?”

“Close the door on your way out.”

Pidge’s jaw dropped in fake offense, and she stormed out. Shiro leaned over and braced his hands against the table, looking Lance in the eye.

“Have I done something wrong, sir?” Lance asked, balancing on a knife’s edge between deferent and defiant.

“—your reputation precedes you, but I have to laugh,” and he did, just for a moment, shaking his head.

“Sir?”

“Hamilton, how come no one can get you on their staff?”

“Sir!”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Shiro said, standing up straight again and lifting his hands up in front of his face with a smile. “You’re a young man of great renown. I know you stole British cannons while we were still downtown—”

A momentary play of pride across Lance’s face, quickly stifled as Shiro kept talking, and… honestly, that was a _lot_ of attention to detail.

“To be their secretary? I don’t think so.”

“Now why are you upset?” Shiro asked, trying to pull out the Space Dad vibe that everyone kept saying he had.

“I’m not.”

“It’s alright, you want to fight, you’ve got a hunger,” Shiro said wistfully, starting to circle the table a little to get closer to Lance. “I was just like you when I was younger. Head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr…”

“Yes!” Lance said, eyes shining and hopeful.

Shiro took the final step closer and loomed over Lance, suddenly frowning. “Dying is easy, young man. _Living_ is harder.”

There was a sharp inhale from the audience.

Lance took a step back, apprehension on his face and in his voice. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m being honest,” Shiro said, turning away and clasping his hands behind his back, starting to pace again. He kept talking, essentially complaining, and finished by turning back to face Lance again, who had his head bent to face the ground. “So?”

Hunk and Pidge popped up from where they were crouched behind the table (and when had they gotten there?), and started chanting along with the ensemble, “I am _not_ throwing away my shot.”

“I’m just like my country, I’m young scrappy and hungry—”

Lance’s head snapped up, fire in his eyes. “I am not throwing away my shot!”

“Son—” Shiro started, as though trying to get a word in edgewise, but Hamilton is as Hamilton does, and the lyrics called for another Hamil-rant, so all Shiro could say was, “We are outgunned, outmanned!”

“You need all the help you can get,” Lance said as he paced across Shiro’s earlier path, a frenetic, frantic energy possessing him. He looked wild-eyed as he spoke, even when he did a silly little hip wiggle for “Marquis de Lafayette.”

“Outnumbered, outplanned!”

“We need some spies on the inside,” Lance said, whirling around, his jacket flapping in the air. “Some king’s men who might let some things slide.”

“BOOM!” Hunk yelled, while Pidge took up the “Whoa~!”

Lance just kept right on talking, until—

“Here comes the General!”

“Rise up!” Lance made a strange sort of movement, leaning back like he’d hefted up a thick and heavy bar onto his chest and was lifting it up onto a shelf, palms upwards and fingers curled like claws.

“What?”

“Here comes the General!”

“Rise up!” Lance repeated the motion. Shiro started walking closer.

“What?”

“ _Here comes the General!”_

“Rise up!” Lance was right at the front of the table, facing the audience with that same manic grin.

“What?”

“ _Here comes the General!”_

“What?”

Drumming.

Shiro dropped a hand onto Lance’s shoulder.

“And his right hand man!”

_"BOOM!"_

The music crashed down just as Shiro’s brain did, slotting pieces together in a way he hadn’t quite noticed before.

_Oh._

Lance connected to Hamilton, but his acting skills kept obscuring which parts it was that he actually identified with. But there were moments that shone through, bits and pieces that _did_ fit Lance more than they did, say, Keith or Pidge.

_That was it, wasn’t it?_

Shiro looked down at Lance as he jumped with a whoop as the music paused, punching Shiro in the arm and telling him that that had been _awesome_ , and running off.

_Validation._

Shiro glanced at the audience, stepping just a little out of the lights, and noticing that, while Allura’s eyes were on him, and Antok and Kolivan had their heads bent towards one another in conversation, Keith and Coran were both staring at the trio talking by the laptop.

 _Lance needed validation_.

Keith tore his gaze away from Lance and looked at Shiro.

Shiro schooled his expression, looked to Allura and then back at Keith, and gave them his best “what now?” shrug.

Keith shrugged back.

Allura frowned and brought a hand up to cover her mouth, staring for a long moment at the ground.

_But what kind?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone drew fanart of Shiro in Washington's uniform; check it out [here](http://phoenixyfriend.tumblr.com/post/158788733290/ochajera-a-v-quick-sketch-of-shiro-in-g-washs).
> 
> This story is apparently going to be a bunch of character exploration through Shiro's eyes as he starts figuring out the Garrison Trio a little more? Or something? IDK my main investment here is actually the blocking. I just want to put down how I envision the dancing and blocking on a screen because I have too much fun imagining it. The actual character stuff is there because... it appeals to people? I mean, I like Lance and I like Shiro and I like having people realize new things about their friends, but also it's feeling a little tired. I've done a couple of Lance fics already, you know?
> 
> In any case, the goal here isn't so much "Shiro doesn't care," but "Shiro isn't nearly as observant as he thinks, and is only just now realizing that he doesn't actually know much about Lance and Hunk."
> 
> ...I wrote half of the You'll Be Back scene and all of Right Hand Man while I was supposed to be studying for a midterm. Because, you know, procrastination.


	4. Interlude - Allura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Allura reflects and worries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got this prompt on tumblr:  
> POV — something that’s already happened, retold from another character’s perspective  
> And since I'm currently working on the next chapter of THIS fic (I'm finished with Winter's Ball and Helpless, just started on Satisfied), I decided I might as well share the prompt fill, since it's long enough to be a stand-alone interlude instead of just an omake.

_“It’s alright, you want to fight, you’ve got a hunger,” Shiro said wistfully, starting to circle the table a little to get closer to Lance. “I was just like you when I was younger. Head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr…”_

_“Yes!” Lance said, eyes shining and hopeful._

_Shiro took the final step closer and loomed over Lance, suddenly frowning. “Dying is easy, young man._ Living  _is harder.”_

_There was a sharp inhale from the audience._

Allura shot a look to her side, trying to see if she could discern whether Coran or Kolivan had been the one to gasp. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t tell; they both looked a little shocked and uncomfortable by the show.

Allura herself wasn’t entirely comfortable with some of what was going on with this… musical? Musical. It was an art form she hadn’t encountered before, though she’d seen enough of theater and music individually that the two together weren’t entirely strange. The costumes looked like something Coran might have worn to fancy parties in his younger days, and the way it was all sung was… strange. There were plenty of elements that were nothing but fast, rhythmic talking (”rapping,” Keith had told her, “I guess they didn’t have that on Altea,” which, no, they hadn’t), and plenty of sections that involved complex, genuinely amazing harmonies. Had she simply heard the music without understanding the words, she’d have probably been amazed by the speed of the ‘rapping’ and the skill of the singing. As it was…

Well.

It seemed there was plenty that Allura hadn’t known about humans.

There had been slaves, though the paladins’ reactions to the concept implied that there weren’t, anymore.

There were wars, between humans and other humans, instead of with other species, and were considered a way of advancing one’s station in life.

The humans immortalized these wars in stories and theater and song, and… well, she still couldn’t tell if they were  _glorifying_  the war or condemning it for happening.

Every other line brought up a new question in Allura’s mind. What was a ‘Sam Adams’? Why were some of this Lafayette man’s lines untranslated? Who was Kip, to have a bay named after him? Hamilton had mentioned both Princeton and King’s College while speaking, but which one did he plan to go to? Were monarchies truly so reviled by humans? How often did humans have wars, for Hamilton to have thought out the economic aftereffects so thoroughly? How often did people  _actually_ die as young as twenty or even just ten on Earth? Was this ‘New York City’ truly the greatest city in their world?

…would the show have been even more impressive if she knew English and more of the historical context?

Goodness, she’d already spotted Coran almost crying once just because the way the war was framed hit too close to home.

(‘The story of tonight’ was so melancholy that Allura herself had felt her chest tighten with it.)

Of course, the entire song regarding the sister had concerned her. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the time, since she’d seen no such prejudice in the paladins, but the idea that gender roles were so heavily enforced on Earth bothered Allura, as did the professed massive divide between the rich and poor. A lot of that song had concerned Allura, when it hadn’t confused her. There were people and writings, such as that “Common Sense by Thomas Paine,” that she had no knowledge of. It was, frankly, not a situation she was used to being in. She was very accustomed to being very well-read for her age, simply because she’d  _had_  to be, as Heiress Apparent.

The argument between Pidge and Hunk (or, well, Hamilton and… Seabury?) had been as amusing as it had been enlightening, at least. The song that followed was…

It was…

Um.

In any case, the paladins had clearly enjoyed the song, however unnerving it had been to Allura. This king was clearly not meant to be a protagonist, however entertaining he was, especially as Pidge played him, but given that this was nowhere near the first mention of a monarchy being disliked by the people, Allura really just… had to wonder.

A lot.

The show distracted her from her thoughts, of course, but she  _knew,_ in the back of her mind, that she’d be thinking about this at length later.

And that brought them to the current song, which was apparently taking place in the middle of a battle and driving a stake into their feelings as surely as the earlier melancholy had.

_…32,000 troops on the water…_

That had clearly been a lot for this war, something that sounded insurmountable to the people there. Allura tried to imagine that each ‘troop’ was equivalent to one Galra fighter jet, and… yes. That was probably the current equivalent, then.

_…wished for a war…_

How bad was that rich-poor gap for a child to wish for war?

_…either gonna die on the battlefield in glory…_

She couldn’t deny it, but something in her  _screamed_ that she wouldn’t let her own paladins die as their predecessors had.

_OUTGUNNED._

_OUTMANNED._

_OUTNUMBERED, OUTPLANNED._

Every. Word. Hit.

The monologue that Shiro played along with only served to hammer in the nails of how desperate this war was, and when it came down to it, Allura didn’t know if she was talking about her own war or the one on the screen. She didn’t know if Shiro’s desperate rage at the war was his own or the character’s. She didn’t know if Lance’s desire for someone to  _just notice him_ was something that came from him or something that came from Hamilton.

_Head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr…_

_Yes!_

_Dying is easy, young man._ Living  _is harder._

She turned to look at Coran and Kolivan again, noting the way their own expressions wavered between engaged with the show and noting the parallels, and wondered again which one of these weathered veterans, one of which had been fighting this war for what was likely most of his life, had been the one to let that bullet of words strike home.

How many of the young soldiers that died with Altea had Coran known, desperate to earn recognition or die trying?

How many young Blades had Kolivan sent to their deaths, bright-eyed and hoping for glory?

How many more times would Allura realize that, however strange this art form was, it was finding a truer home in conveying the nature of war than any novel or account she’d read as a child?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the aliens are veering wildly between “this is fascinating” and “oh god, the humans definitely aren’t new to this” and “should we be worried about the paladins?” They're _enjoying_ the show most of the time, but there are a few songs that are... well. A little concerning.
> 
> The long gap between chapters can be blamed on the fact that I wrote a 217k+ fic in under three months just before S3 came out and then spent a solid month and a half just recovering with only silly one-shots to write. The very long fic in question is "Just a Little Death" and I strongly urge you to go read it.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at phoenixyfriend.tumblr.com if you want to talk about fic or ask me things. That's also where you can find tidbits on my other fics and some of my original work, if you're lucky.


End file.
